>>> Item number 12156 from WRITERS LOG9305A --- (19 records) ----- <<<
Date: Tue, 4 May 1993 18:32:01 JST
Reply-To: WRITERS
Sender: WRITERS
From: Mike Barker
Subject: To write, perchance to dream...
"To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the
assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one's work may be
dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits
suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people
understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel
strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on."
...
"...every writer should be aware that he might be read by the desperate,
by people who might be persuaded toward life or death."
From "The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers" by John
Gardner (Random House, 1991) p. 201.
(I wonder if Gardner talked in epigrams?)